


From Ashes Ascending

by AOnceToldStory



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, ChanBaek - Freeform, Fantasy, KaiSoo - Freeform, M/M, Romance, XiuChen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-05-29 18:28:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15079064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AOnceToldStory/pseuds/AOnceToldStory
Summary: After the end of the War of Blood—a worldwide struggle that resulted in the near extinction of his race—Jongdae still cannot look at the world with the same hateful and fearful eyes as the rest of his people. Unlike them, Jongdae yearns for the horizon and the mysteries that lay beyond it, not knowing that the second he steps his foot outside the borders, his life and the lives of many others will forever be changed as a result of the terrible war. [Main ship: Jongdae/Minseok. More ships will arise as the story progresses.]





	1. World Map

 

## The Mainland, where the Vajarian Spine separates uncharted lands from magical countries

## • & •

## The island of Demea, where Dayborns reign

 


	2. The view from the window

* * *

_Leourn mis enisendya lavrami. Leourn mi dekrethandya rohori._

TO STRENGTH OF COUNTRY FOR PROSPERITY. TO STRENGTH OF PEOPLE FOR PEACE.

**• VELM SENDIAN PROMISE WORD •**

* * *

The nights that could be seen from the windows of Castle Nimieri were like nothing the rest of the world had to offer. Situated near the peak of a mountain at the edge of the Najarian Spine, a rocky chain reaching all around the northwestern coastline of the Najara continent, Nimieri had an elevated and unimpeded view of the landscape that stretched from the foot of the mountain and on for countless miles. The horizon merged with the sky in colour, the darkest shades of brown and blue imaginable, meeting along a straight line that any geographically educated person would know were the vast flatlands that made up most of the centre of the continent. The only thing that clearly distinguished land from sky was the stars. Millions upon millions of them dotting the canopy, all blinking in their distant and dying glory, holding all the colours of the universe and yet so simply white against the darkness of eternity. If one stood on one of the balconies of the castle, which sat on the northeast-facing side of the mountain, this was the sky that could be seen. If one then was brave enough to venture out on one of the many roads that went around the peak of the mountain like a necklace, they would be blessed with the western half of the sky, on which the day's last rays of sunlight never quite disappeared before the two suns rose again. In that direction, there were only mountains, standing ominously pointy and unimaginably tall, growing ever mistier with distance, backlit by the orange and purple glow of the descending suns.

Although Jongdae could not currently see the Najarian Spine, sitting in an open window at the top of one of the lower towers, he knew well what it looked like. He had taken the Soldier's Road around the mountain many times during his visits to Castle Nimieri, strolling along it for full days sometimes even though he wasn't allowed to, simply to be able to stay the night on the western face of the mountain and watch as the suns painted fires too immense to imagine on the horizon behind the Spine. He wondered often what lay in the valleys of those mountains, if there were other castles that history had forgotten, civilisations long abandoned and worn by the elements until withered ruins were all that remained. He'd tried to imagine the many undiscovered roads that s along the sides of dangerous cliff faces, round and round, upwards and down again. Did any of those make it all the way to the other side of the Spine, to where the mountain range opened up to forests, forests to fields, fields to beaches and beaches to oceans? Did those oceans have a horizon of other wonderous lands or did the water stretch on forever? Would he, if he ever came there, be able to see where the water met the sky or would the endless blue just fade into each other to create an even more endless place for him to yearn for?

Jongdae knew what lay beyond the nearly impenetrable wall that the Spine created, but he had never seen it. He had never met anyone who'd seen it. What he knew he'd read in books or seen in paintings, but there was never any proof. If there were people in this world still alive that had ventured beyond the Spine, then they did not belong to Jongdae's race. He would know because even though it sounded ridiculous, he had most likely been face to face with every single member of his people at some point in his life. Through travels to and from his home country, too many for him to remember them all, and journeys around the small country he was in right now, he had met thousands upon thousands of his own people. Now that didn't sound like many at all, and it wasn't either. Some fifty years ago there were over three million members of the Nightborn bloodline living in Velm Senda, the country of their origin, the lands that Castle Nimieri overlooked. Another five million had lived in smaller countries across the Najara continent or emigrated to other places, going as far as across the eastern sea where the great island of Demea lay. Nightborns of all kinds, not only Jongdae's race, had been fully integrated with the rest of the world through trade and common culture and a wish to explore.

Nowadays, just over five-hundred thousand Sendarian and Valecian Nightborns remained. Out of those, about four-hundred thousand lived in Velm Senda, locking themselves up in their homes, fearing that dark days would return and lay waste to the rest of their people. They didn't sit like Jongdae did now, awed at the beauty of the night sky or wishing to travel to distant lands. They cooped up with their loved ones, hoping that the mountains were tall enough to protect them even though they hadn't been when the War of Blood began, or that the valleys were narrow enough to protect even though they too hadn't been when the war came for them and slaughtered them to near extinction.

The remaining hundred thousand had settled in the colonies of northern Zhel, an enormous country of fields and rivers that ran all along the Najarian Spine, from one end of the continent to the other. Zhel was mostly peaceful and kind to all races, however during the war they had started out as just as much of a threat to the Nightborns as the rest of the world. It wasn't until the thirty-year war neared its end and the Nightborns had all fled to the furthest corners of the world that Zhel stepped up and offered them sanctuary. Not many had dared stay in the areas that Zhel had given them, instead moving back to Velm Senda. However, the few that did stay spent the next twenty years building new homes for themselves in the colonies. Settlements became villages and villages grew into towns, none of which were large enough to be called a city but still thriving with community and trade. Jongdae knew the colonies all too well because that was where he lived. He was the only son of Governess Suldaerin Bielmaeda, who ruled with a steady hand the three separate areas now entirely populated by Nightborn refugees—North Dakasa, South Dakasa and Hallar. North Dakasa was the biggest of the three, however, Hallar was the most populated and where the "capital" of the colonies lay. Jongdae's home was in Hallar, a mansion (if it could be called that) that acted as both a residence for the Governess's family and as the City Hall.

Jongdae didn't consider Hallar to be his true home. Before the war had forced him and every other Nightborn to flee for their lives, Jongdae had lived in a small city not far from Zhel's own capital of Benteg. He'd been born there to a lovely young politician-in-training and her nobleman of a husband who had been on a temporary leave of absence from his duties in Velm Senda. Jongdae's father was working close to the royal family already back then, but now he was practically a part of it. He was the closest advisor of the King Sendari of Velm Senda, and thus Jongdae travelled a lot between the colonies and here. His mother seldom accompanied him since her presence in Hallar was vital, so Jongdae took the annual journey by himself. He didn't mind since that meant that he could go at his own pace, steering off track a little here and there or take one of the many detours he'd discovered over the years.

For a brief moment, Jongdae wondered if perhaps he would take the detour through the Banhagi Valley on his way home tomorrow morning. Even though it was nearing the middle of autumn, no snow had fallen yet so the roads would be easy to travel. There lay the tiniest, most adorable village in that valley that served delicious, homemade ales and wines, sometimes even horntree cheese if the season allowed it. Jongdae absolutely _loved_ horntree cheese. It was a juicy, fatty treat made from the inner bark of the horntree and had the same texture as the dairy product after which it was named. Together with a good Banhagi wine, nothing Jongdae had ever tasted could really beat horntree cheese. But no matter how much he wished that he could go there, this time he would have to skip out. It took approximately two days by horse to travel between Castle Nimieri and the Velm Sendian/Zhelian border, depending on the weather. From there Jongdae would accompany, for the first time ever, a group of recently discovered Nightborn refugees that were being moved to the colonies. As to not let the poor people wait for him, Jongdae would go immediately there and not stray. There was always next year when he would travel back to Velm Senda, and then it would be spring again. Horntree cheese was always tastier in spring anyway.

With bare feet dangling from the windowsill and the cold gusts of air blowing in his face, Jongdae yawned widely. He hadn't been able to sleep all night even though he would need the rest for the journey tomorrow. Dreams had made his sleep too light and the silence of the castle had eventually woken him up. Once he was conscious the thoughts had begun to spin around in his head, hundreds of them concerning everything from what he would say the refugees when he met them by the border to what kind of food his mother's housekeeper would have made for him as a _Welcome home_ gift. Once he realised that he couldn't go back to sleep, Jongdae had gotten up and opened the window, losing himself to the beautiful star-littered world outside.

It was indescribably quiet. Not in the way one would feel when locked in a padded room or when holding their hands over their ears tightly. That, to Jongdae, was just the lack of _sounds_. The silence that surrounded him now was more like the lack of _life_ in general. A few birds could be heard chirping in the gardens far below the tower, the wind rustling the tree crowns and the slight murmur of water in the ponds. The castle itself creaked and moaned from many hundreds of years of strain from its own weight. Although Jongdae couldn't hear it, somewhere further down in the castle there were servants sleeping soundly in their beds, noble guests sleeping in rooms in the higher towers, dogs and horses sleeping in the stables outside the main gates. About a dozen people lived in the castle at the moment—to Jongdae that was almost nobody at all. It felt empty, even in daytime, but especially at night. Jongdae's father and his court were in the Velm Senda capital of Saengres at the time, but even when they were home the castle still felt too empty, too quiet, too _dead_.

Jongdae guessed that it came from the trauma that he and every single other Nightborn had suffered during the War of Blood. Considering how immensely their numbers had dwindled during that time, it really wasn't strange that he would feel like there wasn't anybody around anymore.

One second Jongdae had been counting the stars in a particularly close-knitted cluster in the distance, the next he was halfway falling out the window. He wasn't able to sleep, no, but that didn't mean that he wasn't tired. He yawned again and shook the exhaustion from his head, pulling his legs back inside the window and jumping the short distance to the floor with ease. The room he was in wasn't his per se, decorated to be the dressing chamber of a lady, but Jongdae favoured it for its position. It was the top floor of the tower that lay closest to the edge of the castle, meaning that there was nothing in the way of the incredible view. The window in Jongdae's own room four floors down was close enough to the ground for the tallest trees and the walls that surrounded the castle to block the horizon, so Jongdae tended to spend sleepless nights in the dressing chamber. Now he wondered if perhaps getting out of bed had been a bad idea as he stumbled out of the chamber on wobbly legs, yawning again and again until tears spilt over in his eyes. He walked down the stairs to the floor where he lived, never minding the loud creaking noises his heavy bedroom door made when he pushed it open. He held the door with one hand and pulled a large vase up to hold the door when he let go. Whenever his father wasn't home, nobody ever roamed this part of the castle, so he preferred having the door open. Jongdae didn't like confinement of any form. It was one of the many reasons why he couldn't stand the silence—lack of life and movement made any space seem smaller, he thought.

Jongdae shrugged the velvety nightgown he'd been wearing off of his shoulders and onto the floor, walking around the room fully as he mindlessly packed whatever he had forgotten during the evening. A set of earrings that he'd been gifted from his great-grandfather the very same summer, a pair of leather slippers that he didn't like all that much but might give to his friend the stable boy in Hallar, the traditional bottle of Velm Sendian balm that his mother always requested he bring since she preferred true Sendari-crafted ointment to the stuff she could get her hands on in the colonies. He wouldn't like to forget that or his mother would most likely send him back for it the second he came back home.

Jongdae couldn't help but smile at the little flask. He missed his mother very much and was glad that he would get to see her again soon. But then again, he didn't really get to see her all that much in Hallar either, just like he couldn't spend much time with his father while in Velm Senda. Both of his parents were very busy, both when they were home and when they were away. When Jongdae was still a child, before the War of Blood and even the uneasy times before that, he remembered having several days on end with each parent whenever he came to visit them. Sometimes his mother would come along to Velm Senda or his father to Zhel, sometimes his mother would live for a few years in his father's home. Back then they'd been a true family, even though his parents worked so hard. But these days it was rare for him to be able to spend more than a few hours at the time with his mother and father. Having no siblings—giving birth to more than one child was a rarity among Nightborn females—and very little friends—he spent too much time away from either of his "homes" to retain any kind of lasting friendship—Jongdae felt sometimes extremely lonely. He knew that he shouldn't complain since he had so much more than most of his Nightborn sisters and brothers, living a life of luxury compared to most of his people, but Jongdae couldn't help it. He wanted more. More than to travel the same route through the mountains between the homes that didn't feel like homes, more than the studies of law and politics that he took in both Velm Senda and Hallar, more than the future of taking over after his mother as Governor of the Nightborn Colonies that had been set out for him.

It wasn't that Jongdae didn't want to become a leader for his people. He wanted that very much and always had. He just didn't want to become the _kind_ of leader that his mother and father wanted him to be. They tried to groom him into becoming a protector, someone who held the borders that had been so carefully put up between the Nightborns and the outside world, someone who looked out for his people and _only_ his people.

In the midsts of one last circulation around his room, Jongdae stopped in front of a large painting that hung above the mantlepiece of a large fireplace. Inside the beautifully carved silver frame was a picture of a man that could very well have been Jongdae himself, had it not been for the hints of wrinkles around the eyes and corners of his mouth. Jongdae was the spitting image of his father, who in turn was the spitting image of his father. Like almost every other Nightborn there was, they had ebony black hair that fell in silky waves down their scalps and equally dark eyes with wide irises. Their bodies were slender and agile, although much heavier than they appeared. Those were trademarks of all Nightborns, but both Jongdae and his father also had some traits that were characteristic of the Sendari race—pale skin with a purplish undertone that was most visible where the skin was thinner, like around the eyes and lips and on their collarbones. In Jongdae's case, the hues were most prominent in the corners of his eyes, where the skin was almost wine-coloured.

Jongdae looked very much like a typical Sendari Nightborn. He was extremely proud of that and hoped that he would always be. But no matter how grandiose and respectable his father's image looked hanging above the mantlepiece like this, Jongdae still couldn't imagine himself becoming like him. He couldn't for his life believe that the world was as dark and unforgivable as his parents and their respective governments made it out to be. Maybe he should think that since he was there to witness the horrible things that were done to his people, but no matter how many nightmares he had of burning buildings and dead people, Jongdae held firm his conviction that deep down the world was still good. The War of Blood was an enormous misunderstanding with irreversible consequences, many of which the other bloodlines would never be able to pay them back for, but in the end, Jongdae believed that the only way his people would be able to survive was if they reunited with the rest of the world. Only by rebuilding the trust that had been broken on both sides of the conflict could the repetition of such a war be avoided. If Jongdae ever became an advisor like his father or, more likely, a successor to his mother, that's what he would strive for.

Unfortunately, he didn't think that he'd be accepted as a leader figure by his people if he held on to his opinions. Not many Nightborns thought like he did, and who could blame them? Jongdae himself couldn't really explain why he so easily forgave the world for what they together had done to Velm Senda and her children. He just did. He couldn't bear the thought of hating it to the point of not wanting to see it, travel through it, discover it. That, in a way, was the worst kind of confinement he could imagine.

Maybe he wasn't cut out to be a leader at all.

With nothing left to pack and once again wide awake, Jongdae threw himself face-up, still , on the enormous, round bed which sat in the middle of the half-moon-shaped room. The heavy curtains that draped over the bed were poor replacements for the starry skies he'd seen from the dressing chamber's window, but he knew that he had to sleep. Unless he wanted to fall off his horse from pure fatigue before he even reached his first waypoint tomorrow, then he had to get at least a couple of hours of rest before dawn broke. He had attempted to stay up an entire night once before a journey from Velm Senda, having been completely emerged in a book he'd found the day before. That hadn't ended so well and he'd injured his head when slipping out of the saddle, then found by some travelling merchants along the road and brought back to the castle where a very angry and worried Castle Mistress had been waiting to scold him. Nightborns weren't easily injured like that, so Jongdae remembered the pain of his head injury quite vividly and did not wish to experience it again.

As he forced his eyes closed, willing his thoughts to settle and his body to relax, the world once more became way too quiet for his liking. He focused on the birds in the garden, the water in the pond, the white noise of the castle around him—it wasn't enough. He needed life around him to be able to relax, movement and space and just... _life_. he had no better way to explain it. Minutes came and went, threatened to become hours, and Jongdae's need for noise refused to be ignored. Eventually, he gave up again and sat up straight on the bed, groaning in annoyance. There was no helping it. If he wanted to sleep he'd have to work for it, so he did. He drew from the powers within himself, focused the beating of his heart and the force of his thoughts into the centre of his body and honed it. He held his breath as he extended one arm towards the ceiling and began a slow, circular waving motion. Instantly the space underneath the bed curtains became thick with clouds, first white and fluffy, the darker and darker as the pressure in them built up. Jongdae's face was relaxed and his posture lazy as he continued building up the storm above his head, not satisfied until the clouds were a deep grey colour and tiny little sparks began sputtering on top of them. His arm fell back down and he let out a long sigh, expelling the excess energy from his body. As the little sparks in the clouds became more powerful, turning into tiny bolts of lightning that lit up the entire room, Jongdae lay back down on the bed and crawled in underneath the heavy covers. Thunder roared above his head, not deafening at all but still quite loud, immediately following the miniature lightning strikes that made the very air in the room vibrate.

Using magic was nothing to Jongdae, who had not only been born with strong powers but also worked them to perfection all through his life. With the sounds of thunder filling the silence that he despised so much, eventually, sleep came for him and stole him away. Dreams allowed him to go on the adventures his real life had yet to grant him and he smiled right before he fell off the edge of unconsciousness and into his second universe.

* * *

 


	3. The family that isn't

 

* * *

_Fisopin miintom pukotoouris ni pii tim._

YOU CAN'T FALL TWICE IN THE SAME STUMBLE.

**• JUUMO PROVERB •**

* * *

The next morning it was, as expected of someone who hadn't slept more than three hours tops, near impossible for Jongdae to get out of bed. The storm he'd conjured during the night had long since dissipated above him and the light of the two suns was reaching around the back of the castle, reflecting onto the bright blue sky to the west and back in through the windows onto Jongdae's face. It was going to take a lot more than a little sunlight to get him up. He groaned as he shifted positions, pulling the blankets further up above his head as if that could somehow turn back time and he wished, not for the first time, that he was a Silverborn instead of a Nightborn. That way, at least, he'd have had a chance at being born with the highly desirable time magic that only pure-blooded Kashkye could possess. He wondered begrudgingly what it was like to be able to stop time for everyone but oneself, to be able to sleep in for as long as you wanted and never be late for anything. Ever.

Jongdae was _not_ of the Kashkye race and could therefore _not_ sleep in for as long as he liked. That was only one of the many things that the Castle Mistress of Nimieri was there to remind her lazy, insomniac protegée of.

Her voice came from the doors like lightning from a clear sky, more thunderous than any storm Jongdae had ever created. "Neljong _dae_ mid Bielmaeda! The suns are up and you are not! Argh! What is with the younglings of today, huh?!"

The covers flew off of Jongdae's body with a gust of icy wind, easily controlled by simple waves of the Castle Mistress's hand. She circled the room one time, never minding that Jongdae was lying completely on the bed, limbs spread out without a care in the world, face pressed into the pillow to shut the lights out. She flicked her wrist at the two saddlebags that Jongdae had packed the night before, moving them through the air towards the door without even looking at them, instead eyeing the rest of the room for things her young master might have or most likely would have forgotten otherwise. When she was satisfied with the emptiness of the room she headed for the door where the saddlebags were hanging in midair waiting for her. Jongdae muttered something incoherent into the pillow as the click-clack of the Castle Mistress's heeled shoes echoed around the sleeping chamber.

She turned in the door, hands on her hips, wrinkled eyes staring at the still unmoving youngling with lips pressed thin in exasperation.

"I won't tell you again, Neljongdaemid," she said loudly, making sure that every syllable of his full name was disgustingly clear. "It's not me who will have to ride in complete darkness because he didn't make it to the waypoint before dusk."

Jongdae's reply came in the form of a grunt and a dismissive wave of his hand. Consciousness was beginning to slip back into his body but his mind was still heavy with sleep, and when Jongdae was tired he was impossible to reason with. The Castle Mistress knew as much, which was also why she didn't give up. She was an older lady, nearing six hundred years of age, and she had little patience with young brats like a sleepy Governess's son who weren't even a full century old. With the saddlebags still hovering behind her back, lifted by the force of perfectly controlled airflow, the Castle Mistress flicked a finger in Jongdae's direction. The effects were immediate as the body of the young Sendari flew into the air, arms and legs flailing wildly, suddenly wide awake and screaming in a voice so high-pitched that the gardeners outside the window must've thought that it belonged to a little girl. The tiniest of smiles came across the Castle Mistress's wry face, creating even more purple-tinted wrinkles around and eyes.

"Alright, alright, I yield!" Jongdae shrieked, attempting to cover himself as his body was flung around in a humiliating fashion. "I'm awake!"

"Good," the Castle Mistress said simply and let her hand fall back to her side.

Instantly the powerful gusts of winds that had carried Jongdae vanished and he found himself crashing helplessly back onto the bed, only to bounce off of it and onto the floor from the force of the fall. He scrambled over the floorboards, finding the velvet robe he'd discarded the night before and quickly wrapped it around himself, then stood up with his back straightened and mouth pouting in obvious embarrassment. He hoped for his dear life that nobody had seen the event through the window, cursing that his room lay so far down in the tower.

The Castle Mistress looked mildly amused. "Now get dressed—" she raised a warning finger that made Jongdae flinch back, "— _properly_ and come down to get your breakfast. It was set out for you an hour ago and I'm not heating it up again. A horse will be ready for your departure when you are done."

"Nice to know that you wish to _get rid of me so quickly_!" Jongdae called after her as she turned on her heel and walked briskly down the stairs, the saddlebags following behind her in the air like two well-trained birds.

As soon as she was out of sight, Jongdae broke into a wide and bright smile. Nobody in the castle treated him like Mistress Maenshui and it would be a lie to say that he didn't enjoy it. She lit up his world with her nagging and constant frown, however, Jongdae knew that the old hag loved him—after all, she had nursed him as if he was her own every time he came here, ever since before he could walk and before his childhood tantrums involved sparks flying from his fingers. Jongdae saw her as more of a grandmother than a servant, even though the relationship between Mistress Maeshui and Jongdae's father was nowhere near that of a mother and son. The Castle Mistress had been there when Jongdae's father was born and watched him grow, but where the Mistress could literally throw Jongdae out of bed with her magic, whenever Jongdae's father was around she bowed to him like the rest, speaking politely. Jongdae didn't know why exactly—his father was respectable, yes, and the castle was his assigned home, but he wasn't a lord or royalty. His position in the Velm Sendian royal family was that of the King Sendari's closest advisor. Velm Senda had a unique system for the rulership of their country which meant that the two most numerous Nightborn races (which after the horrible war were the _only_ two) each had a royal family with each their own succession. However, instead of having two Kings ruling side by side, the families took turns ruling for a century. If for a hundred years there had been a King Valecia, then the Crown Prince would be of the Sendari house. Once he was crowned and a hundred years past, then the throne would fall to the next in line from the Valecian house. It was an ancient tradition that had stuck and, at least up until the start of the War of Blood, had worked perfectly.

It was now ninety-nine years since the current King Sendari had been crowned. Preparations for his abnegation had been going on for a few years and the chaos that always ensued was worse than ever. Jongdae couldn't sense the unrest in the lands surrounding Castle Nimieri, which lay far from any highly populated areas or the capital, but he knew from what his parents told him. He knew from what he'd seen and heard whenever he left the castle. Word was that a majority of the Sendari race was against the Valecian house taking over again and such thinking was extremely unusual.

Jongdae, being the son of two politically involved parents, was not all that surprised. Considering the many scandals that had surrounded the Valecian royal family in the near past and, more importantly, their involvement with the start of the War of Blood, it was expected that there'd be some resistance this time around. In his own opinion, Jongdae thought that the current King had proven himself more than capable of ruling the Nightborns for many centuries to come. He had been steady and trustworthy all through the war, acting with cunning and compassion during the worst of times. Many believed that he was the sole reason that the Nightborn bloodline wasn't wiped out completely before the end of the war. Jongdae definitely agreed that the King Sendari was part of the reason that their bloodline had survived, but he wouldn't drag it quite that far. He wasn't one to easily cast aside traditions unless there was a very good reason to, and as for the Change of Kings, he stood firm. However, when it came to the Valecian Crown Prince, Jongdae knew far too little to form an opinion.

Vaeshin IV Junmyeon, Jongdae recalled the young Valecian Prince's name to be. Nearing two-hundred years of age he was still almost seventy years older than Jongdae and would've have lived long enough during the rule of his grandfather King Valecia, Vaeshin II Nodeon, to remember what it was like. Jongdae was too young to remember the Change of Kings that crowned their current King Sendari and put Jongdae's father in the position of the King's First Advisor. He did remember Nodeon, though, having met (more like dined at the same table as) the stoic old Valecian a few times over the years. Jongdae couldn't quite recall if he'd ever met the Crown Prince during one of those royal dinners, but he figured that he must have. Whatever the case, Jongdae didn't know him.

Realising that he was still standing in his nightgown with the same stupid smile on his face, Jongdae snapped out of his thoughts with a start and dove for his wardrobe. He'd put out his travelling garments the day before as to not accidentally pack them down and changed into them as fast as he could. A soft cotton undershirt, two separate overshirts and a thin but warm leather coat that laced tightly around his middle over thick riding pants and high socks that would keep his feet from freezing off. Sitting barefoot in the windowsill at night was one thing when he came from and could go back to a heated room and bed—when out on the road with nothing but the dirt road beneath him and the sky above, Jongdae was happy to risk dressing too warm. He'd made that mistake too, once, overestimating the late winter thinking that one night wouldn't be so bad even if the cold set in. He'd been wrong. Oh, he'd been _so_ wrong.

Once he'd finished slipping into his journey boots he went over to his grooming mirror, opened a small drawer on the bench top and took out the singular item inside. The locket hung heavy on a golden chain, large and bulky from the front but slim enough to sit comfortably against his sternum once he put it on. The thin, circular disc was intricately crafted in layers, creating a leaf-like relief that went round and round a tiny, shimmering rhodonite stone.

He would never forget the locket. He didn't wear it too much, no, not wanting to risk losing it if the chain decided to break, but he would never leave without it.

Castle Nimieri in itself wasn't very big at all. It sat halfway into the mountainside, built from the same rock that was hacked out to make room for it. Two wings on either side of the castle, housing the kitchens, servant's living quarter's, practice rooms, common rooms, the library, Jongdae's father's study, and lots more of small knocks and crooks that Jongdae had explored over the years. Four towers extended, two from each wing, the inner ones taller and wider than the outer ones, one of which was Jongdae's own tower. A much larger, centre spire extended between the four towers and housed the rooms of his father and mother when she was visiting, as well as some floors that were locked and off limits to anyone but Jongdae's father. In the heart of the castle was the Black Hall—a wide open, pillared space that served as both entrance hall, stairway to the towers and wings and banquet hall. Almost every Velm Sendian castle was designed like this, with a Black Hall in the middle. Even though this area had no religious or sacred purpose, it was somehow a mark of the Nightborn bloodline. The Black Hall was usually very dark, but not necessarily. In the case of Castle Nimieri, the walls and pillars were made from light grey and black-speckled marble, clad with heavy red curtains that almost looked like rivers of blood running down the pillars. Jongdae had come up with the macabre description himself when he was still a child, but he honestly believed the Black Hall to be magnificent and beautiful. Most of all, Jongdae liked it for its vastness, a place that never felt small and where every single tiny sound multiplied and expanded tenfold.

This was where Jongdae landed when he hurried down from his tower and skipped down the stairs from the right-hand wing's balcony. The place was near empty but the white noise of half-a-dozen busy servants made the room come to life. Jongdae's nose caught the heavenly smell of breakfast in the air, however, he couldn't quite settle down to eat. Now that he was dressed and ready, a familiar tension had begun to build in his stomach. It was his yearning for adventure, a deprivation of the freedom that he could only feel when out on a long and tedious journey. He didn't long for home, but rather for the road to get there.

Deciding that he was too eager to get started, Jongdae called on one of the cooks to prepare his breakfast to be eaten on the move instead. The elderly Sendari bowed and scurried off, coming back not ten minutes later with a pouch filled with generous rations of all of Jongdae's favourite breakfast items. Thanking the cook and the servants that assisting him, Jongdae took the pouch and exited the castle with bids of goodbye and wishes for his safe travel echoing through the Black Hall behind him.

The gardens that surrounded Castle Nimieri were much bigger than the size of the castle demanded, much because of how the mountain itself was shaped. The ground was quite flat, sloping down only slightly for almost half-a-mile before tapering off into cliffs and chipped mountain faces. Where the ground allowed it there was grass and fields and stone walkways winding through mazes of flowering bushes and trees. There was a bridge leading over a huge crack in the rock on the way between the gardens and the castle gates, and it had curved metal beams across the top where vines climbed around, creating a ceiling of vibrant greens and yellows. The bridge was quite new, as was most of the areas a little further from the castle itself. Those hadn't been protected when the war came close to levelling the Velm Sendian society with the ground. Attacks had reached as far as Edras, the capital that lay further west into the Spine, and so magical shields had been put in place around the castles and city halls where most of the survivors managed to ride it out.

Jongdae didn't want to think too much about the thousands of Nightborns that had given their lives to keep those shields up. It was, however, one of the Castle Mistress's favourite things to do. Jongdae met her on the other side of the bridge, standing solemnly some distance from its mouth where the crack in the mountain met the end of the sloping plateau. Beyond that lay only steep mountainsides and potentially deadly falls.

Mistress Maenshui felt her young protegée approach long before the sounds of his footfalls in the grass could be heard.

"I thought I told you to hurry," she said, voice still sharp with warning but softer than it had been in Jongdae's room.

"Hey, I skipped breakfast, didn't I?" Jongdae snickered lightly—he knew all too well why the older lady was whining to him about it. "I'll make it to the waypoint by tonight, don't worry. And even if I didn't, the Soldier's Road isn't exactly dangerous this time of year."

It looked like the Castle Mistress wanted to argue, but she held her tongue, for what reason Jongdae didn't know. She let her eyes wander out beyond the edge of the rocky slope where it became too steep for the garden to be extended. Where the well-kept grass ended, a sea of round boulders followed, dark and moss-covered. It would have blended perfectly together with Nimieri's stone-covered scenery if not for one thing—approximately every fourth boulder out of the many hundreds was painted white. Not a normal, bland white either, but an iridescent one, like the pearly inside of seashells. They were beautiful in the sunlight, especially now that the morning was still quite early and the two suns were still a few shades darker than they would be at noon. Jongdae allowed for a minute of silence. He always felt heavy at heart when looking out over _Nimyan Arda_ , the "Remember the Ice" memorial that the white rocks represented. Each painted stone was a life lost during the attack on Castle Nimieri during the War of Blood, with a name of its own and people to mourn them. Jongdae had known only a few of them personally and not been very close with any of them, however, one of the rocks was especially dear to him because of Mistress Maenshui. It was that rock, located in the midsts of all the others, that the Castle Mistress was staring at right now.

The rock that represented her granddaughter, lost in the attack on the castle at the mere age of seventy-six.

Her face was neutral, grief having faded over the near twenty-five years since the attack, but her voice was a lot heavier. "You've travelled the Soldier's Road hundreds of times, Neljongdaemid. I have no doubt about your safety as long as you're in Velm Senda. But the roads through Zhel..."

"I was born in Zhel, you know," Jongdae couldn't help but comment. "And those are the same roads I take every time I come here and every time I leave. It will be no different."

"You're usually alone," Mistress Maenshui pointed out gravely. "Now you're going to travel with two dozen Nightborn refugees. On your own, you don't draw much attention to yourself. A company that large is sure the attract some foul people. Don't be so quick to disregard the risks of this journey."

Jongdae repressed the urge to say that he didn't because it wouldn't be true. He hadn't thought of the potential dangers of travelling with others as opposed to by himself. They would still be accompanied by Zhelian soldiers, so Jongdae had a hard time believing that any serious trouble would dare cross their path, but what did he know, really? This was the first time he did something like this, acting as a true future Governor of the colonies by escorting its soon-to-be inhabitants home.

"Just promise that you will be careful, Neljongdaemid," Mistress Maenshui said. Back was the sharp undertone of her voice, commanding and strong.

"If you promise to stop calling me that," Jongdae smiled. "That's what my mother calls me."

It was the Castle Mistress's turn to smile now, but she had a hint of mockery to hers. "I changed your diapers as a child, Neljongdaemid. You'll do well to remember that."

"No, thank you," Jongdae said quickly with a roll of his eyes, but then his attitude changed. He took a step back, place the parcel with his breakfast on the ground and waited for the Castle Mistress to face him. He placed one hand over the centre of his chest and the other hand on top, closing his eyes for a moment. "Goodbye, _aiaerna_. Until I return."

Where usually it would have been the place of the Castle Mistress to bow to the son of the castle's owner, now Mistress Maenshui instead copied the Sendari gesture of parting, placing both hands over the centre of his chest and closing her eyes. "Goodbye, _in anda_. Safe travels."

As was the Sendari Nightborn way, Jongdae turned and walked away before the Castle Mistress opened her eyes again, back towards the stone walkway that lead to the castle walls and the grand gates. It wasn't far from the bridge and the tall walls were already towering above him as he walked in among the houses that sat in a circle around the two enormous gates. Some stable boys buzzed about doing their job, cleaning up after the horses and moving them between pastures, and the occasional soldier walked past to exchange posts on the wall with his comrades. Jongdae made immediately for one of the stables where his horse had already been prepared for him. The stable boy was standing with the light brown creature outside on the courtyard, scratching behind the ears and feeding him pieces of fruit. When Jongdae appeared beside him the boy startled to the side, tiny sparks of fire flying from his hands when he did so.

"Better learn to control those reactions or you're gonna scare the horses," Jongdae smiled teasingly at the embarrassed stable boy.

The boy beamed brightly at him and gave two quick bows. "I will have become better when you come back, Master Jongdae!"

Jongdae felt a surge of happiness go through him at the sight of the smaller Sendari—maybe he wasn't as lonely as he sometimes felt. Maybe it was simply because he didn't have any friends in Velm Senda the way he did in the colonies. Maybe it was the lack of people his age that made him feel out of place sometimes. Because yes, his father hadn't been at Castle Nimieri more than a couple of times in the half-year since Jongdae came here. He had written to his mother and friends in Hallar a few times, but none had come to visit him. But no matter all of that, Jongdae still had a family here—not as close as his real one, but a family none the less. The servants in the castle that tended to him even when he didn't ask them to, the cook who went to great lengths to make foods from different parts of the world even when the ingredients were hard to come by, the stable boys who always ran outside the gates to greet him when he arrived, asking him to tell stories of the outside world. And Mistress Maenshui, of course, the grandmother he'd never had (his own died long before Jongdae was born) and the mother he missed when his own wasn't around.

Jongdae had a family in Velm Senda. Just not a home.

He hadn't realised that he'd taken the horse by the reigns and was leading it out onto the road that went to and beyond the gates, too busy with his thoughts. He hadn't noticed that the guards had called out his approach and was pulling the gates open, enormous chains clanking and churning away to move the huge, metal doors. But when they did open and Jongdae found himself staring out into the beginnings of the Soldier's Road, nothing more than an endless stretch of gravel and dirt in between boulders and high-altitude trees, his mind became immediately alert. The road called to him like the most beautiful song he'd ever heard, pulled him onto itself with a gravity-defying force.

Jongdae didn't long for home. He longed for the road.

The stable boy had joined his friends some distance behind Jongdae, waving and calling after him to bring more good stories when he came back. The guards on the walls stood in salute, offering him the Sendari gesture of parting, as the guards beside the gates held firm the doors for him to pass through. Jongdae quickly attached his food satchel onto the saddlebags that had been put on the horse for him, then mounted with a swift jump and pull. The horse waited patiently for Jongdae to make himself comfortable in the saddle, heeding its rider's every move. With a mischievous glimmer in his large, dark eyes, Jongdae gave the horse a pat on the neck and leaned in close to its ear.

"Let's make some clouds."

They were off. With an excited cry and a nudge with his heels into the horse's sides, they exploded into a gallop, the hooves of the horse turning of clouds of dust behind them. They spurted through the open gates, running like the wind, Jongdae never turning to look back. His eyes were glued to the road ahead, the curve of it around a cliff face so far away that was only the first out of the many that made the Soldier's Road wind around and down the mountainsides. The chilly air in his face and hair, the feeling of vastness that came as soon as the castle and its surrounding civilisation were out of sight—Jongdae lived for this. Adventure was flowering in his chest. He could almost feel the thunder beginning to build up, working its way from the deepest pits of his body to his fingertips. He held it back, not wanting to accidentally shock the horse from overexcitement, but it was hard. It was too long since he'd been off like this, without anyone to hold him back or any walls to block his path.

Just like he often felt when he was moving between Velm Senda and the colonies, Jongdae wished that he didn't have a destination. He wished that he could go wherever he pleased, that he could take whatever road opened up before him without knowing who lived along it or where it would take him. He wished that he didn't have to care about borders between countries or waters too big to cross.

He wished, so bad, that he was allowed to see the world. Once, long ago, he had been, but back then he'd been too young to do it. When he finally came of age, the war happened, and every ounce of freedom there had been for him to travel was taken away from him. Simply because of him being a Nightborn.

Someday, he would attempt to change that too. He didn't want to believe that a bunch of laws written on parchment were going to stop him from seeing what lay beyond the grasslands of Zhel or the coastline of Juumo. If it was the last thing he did, he would see the other side of the Spine someday as well. He would explore those uncharted lands, walk its beaches, climbs its hills.

He sighed as he allowed the horse to slow down to a steady walk. No matter how much he wished for all of those things, it wasn't going to happen today, or tomorrow, or the day after that. For now, he had a different kind of adventure to look forward to, and a fun journey to get there too. It would take him two days to ride to the border—that was enough time for him to grow tired of these familiar dirt roads, he told himself.

It was the biggest lie he'd ever told.

* * *

 


	4. The gates to Zhel

* * *

_Minskaete aurelim._

YOU HAVE COME.

**• NEEVE FORMAL GREETING •**

* * *

 

It took about one-and-a-half days for Jongdae to come down the mountain and enter the great forests that lay at its feet. It really was an impressive change of scenery leaving the barren, rocky mountain roads behind, only to be faced with a literal wall of dark green when the woods took over. The trees stood tightly together, the ground covered in moss and foliage so thick that it swallowed all sounds that tried to bounce on it. Once inside of it, the forest was dense enough to block out most of the sunlight, letting through only the occasional beam in which small gatherings of exquisitely rainbow-coloured flowers grew, greedy for the light. Jongdae loved this part of the journey the best. But even though the woods seemed impossibly large when riding through them, in comparison to the monstrosity that was the Spine or the grass-covered flatlands that covered most of Zhel, it was nothing but a thin line of green separating the heart of Velm Senda from the more open areas where its borders met with Zhel's. It would take him until sundown to reach the other side, and another few hours to arrive at the Isaeng Fort, where the refugees were waiting for him.

Jongdae rode into the woods with confidence, knowing the way to go by heart. It wasn't more than a thin trail of bare ground that snaked through the foliage, something that one could easily miss while on horseback and ride away from. Where the trail split and veered off, Jongdae knew which turn to take. Even the horse seemed to remember the route, having taken its rider here many times. However, Jongdae was one of the few Nightborns to easily took the road through the woods since the war and didn't go around it. During the War of Blood, these trees had betrayed Velm Senda. The Nightborns had put up their last lines of defence inside the woods, hoping that the trees and the dark would cover them when the enemy moved in, but it had become a death trap. The thickness of the forest had allowed the enemy, which was more used to terrain like that, to separate the Nightborn forces and hunt them down. Had the Nightborns chosen to let the enemy get through the woods unhindered and taken to defend the mountains, then perhaps Velm Senda would have made it through the war. But once the battles on the slopes of the Spine began, the Velm Sendian army had already dwindled drastically.

But like with so many other things, Jongdae just couldn't see the forest as a place where his people fought to their bitter ends. He didn't see bloodshed and darkness but rather a comforting vastness and mystery. He didn't hear the echoes of enemy war cries or the clang of sword on sword. He heard the wind in the leaves and the crunch of the horse's hooves on the ground. Sometimes Jongdae wondered if he didn't care for his people, his kind, his own race, as much as he should. It didn't feel like he didn't care. He loved them so much, wanted to spend his life working for them to regain their place in the world, wanted them to roam safely the same distances he yearned for every day. He wanted other races to smile when they met them, wanted people of all kinds to want to explore Velm Senda the same way Jongdae wished to see Juumo and Ayath and even Chogunni Islands. How was that to not care? Where, in his attempts to not hate the world who apparently hated him, was he in the wrong?

He'd stopped beside a small, rickety bridge over a stream when these worries came to him. The horse had its nose thirstily in the water while Jongdae nipped at the edge of a fruitcake, hungry but too lost in his thoughts to eat.

"I wonder if there are other people like me out there," he mumbled to himself. "I wonder if there's someone that wishes to get to know us Nightborns, to prove that all of this hatred, that the war and... that all of it is wrong."

The horse looked up into the woods for a moment, ears moving as if it heard something, then ignored it and went on to feed on the deliciously moist grass. Jongdae's glance went in the direction that the horse had looked, south-southeast bound, towards the Zhel capital of Benteg if Jongdae wasn't mistaken.

"You really think they're out there?” he asked dreamily into the woods. “That someone?”

Jongdae allowed the horse a little more time to rest before he mounted and continued on down the trail. The ground had slowly descended for hours but now it was levelling out—the first signs that he was nearing its edge where the flatlands of Zhel would take over. Jongdae was just beginning to be desperate for some sunlight, the suns he couldn’t see already leaving the sky behind him, when the end of the forest opened up before him. Jongdae pushed the tired horse a little harder, smiled a little wider as he caught the first glimpse of towers in the distance, evenly spaced along a low, dark line that stretched all across the horizon. The towers all looked the same, but Jongdae knew which one to look for—a little to the south, a bright fire burning at its top although it was near invisible against the orange dusk.

Isaeng Fort. The land of the Nightborns ended there, and the world lay beyond.

By the time Jongdae had crossed the flowering fields of grain and the fruit yards between the woods and the border, waving at the farmers as he passed, the suns had already set. The wall that separated Velm Senda from Zhel was no longer just a low line, but tall and intimidating. The towers which had looked like toys from the forest edge were now large as whole castles on their own with lights flickering in the small windows. The flames that burned in its cradle on top of Isaeng Fort spread its heat all the way to the ground and a fair bit up the path that Jongdae was coming down. Now that he was closer he could see its colour—a steady dark red, which meant that the wall was held by and protected by both Velm Sendian soldiers and forces from Zhel. Jongdae had only ever seen it burn another hue and that was when the war had started and he had fled across the border into Velm Senda along with so many others of his people. Back then the flames had burned black.

If the gates to Castle Nimieri were big, then the gates into Isaeng Fort were absolutely humongous. Chains made from links the size of small boats began moving upon Jongdae’s approach, pulling the gigantic doors open slowly. Each door was as thick as Jongdae was tall, made from the same impenetrable metal as the wall itself, complete with large spikes and studs along an otherwise flat enough surface to make climbing it impossible. No soldiers guarded the Velm Sendian side of the wall—it was rarely considered necessary—but Jongdae could see the white helmets peeking out through the windows and atop the wall far above his head as he rode up to the gates. He was greeted right before he passed them by a group of three standing in his way, two of which he recognised and who were dressed in the characteristically white Nightborn armour. One was the Sendari Captain of Arms, Mijinaeshi, more known to Jongdae as aunt Jinae, the second was the Velician Captain of Arms, Yuno. Both had come to greet Jongdae when he arrived many times, however the third had never joined them before. He was clad in shining silver armour as opposed to the mat-white of the Nightborns, he stood at least two heads taller than either of them and had light blue, almost glowing eyes. Jongdae knew immediately that he was a Neeve, a race of the Starborn bloodline—over the shoulder plates Jongdae could see the bends of folded wings, large and majestic, covered in thick, dark feathers that shifted in yellow and green depending on where the light fell on them.

Captain Jinae spoke first. “Good to see you arrive safely, Master Jongdae. We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow morning, but you seem to have ridden hard as always.”

“I didn’t want to keep the refugees waiting,” Jongdae said as he dismounted and offered each of the three officials polite greetings. He made certain to focus extra carefully on the Neeve soldier, whom he still hadn’t been introduced to.

Captain Yuno took the honour. “Meet Lieutenant Wu Yifan, commander of the protection force that will escort you to the Colonies.”

Lieutenant Wu and Jongdae greeted each other almost simultaneously according to their own customs, neither very sure of who was in a higher position even though Jongdae held no rank at all.

“I’m very thankful for the help of your forces, Lieutenant,” Jongdae said earnestly. “I hope their skills won’t be of need, though.”

“As do I, young master Bielmaeda,” the Lieutenant replied, then gestured for the Sendarian to walk with them. “My wish is that this will be as speedy and peaceful of a journey as possible.”

Jongdae hadn’t expected much else—just like every other time he had dealt with soldiers from Zhel, they weren’t very interested in simple escort missions, especially so when the people they were protecting happened to be Nightborns. The war was over, yes, but so many of Zhel’s soldiers, who had much shorter lifespans than Nightborns did, had been born into a different way of thinking and joined while the war was still raging. To them the norm was to hate and fear anything that originated from Velm Senda, making it so that even many years after the war ended, treating Nightborns as allies and friends still did not come naturally. However, when Jongdae looked into the eyes of Lieutenant Wu, he saw very little of that innate superiority that Neeves, Minaeri and other Starborn races usually possessed. Perhaps, Jongdae wondered, the soldier in front of him was young enough to have joined the army after the end of the war, but he didn’t think so. Lieutenant Wu looked to be thirty-something years old, which would be about a third of his race’s expected lifespan. He could very well have fought in most of the last half of the War of Blood’s battles—his demeanour told Jongdae that he had.

The gates closed behind them and locked shut with the noises of an impressive structure and Jongdae’s horse was taken to the stables. As the four of them strolled through the courtyard, the two Captains and the Lieutenant updated Jongdae on worldly things, what the plan was for the evening and for their departure the next day. Although Jongdae was starved of first-hand news from beyond the border, right now he was more fascinated by the people moving about the Fort and how much it had changed in the half-year since he last visited it. Jongdae remembered a highly organised military base that, although it had suffered great damage during the war, contained impressive weaponry, advanced defence systems and thousands of mixed Starborn, Silverborn and Nightborn soldiers from all over the Najara continent. There would have been groups of young recruits, loyal volunteers, Keepers of House, stable boys and visiting or passing civilians all sharing the vast courtyard and the numerous public spaces inside the Fort itself. Sometimes one could have even seen tourists from far corners of the continent coming to see the preserved marks and scars that the wall carried from the war. Once, Jongdae had even been tasked with going along on a guided tour, just to see if the foreign translations were correct and factly. He wasn’t entirely sure about the smaller languages, but thankfully, all of the Zhelian languages were correct.

But it wasn’t the lack of tourists that was bothering Jongdae now—after all, the season for it was long over—but rather the lack of movement in general. There were no groups of young recruits, no volunteers, no civilians buzzing about. Even the housekeepers seemed fewer than normal.

Surprisingly, the first one to offer Jongdae an explanation was Lieutenant Wu. “Both Zhel and Ionor have pulled most of their forces from the border,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s been twenty years since the war ended. Most countries believe that there is no longer a need to protect this place.”

“It is not about whether or not it needs protecting,” Jongdae said calmly. “It is about duty and making amends. Zhel alone can be held responsible for breaking through these walls during the war. Feels like it would be their duty to make certain that can’t happen again.”

“Master Jongdae, do not misunderstand,” Captain Yuno added quickly. “Lieutenant Wu is not of Zhel. He is part of an Ionor freelancer battalion. He and the men that will accompany you are all volunteers.”

Now Jongdae was surprised for real and he looked up at the tall and magnificent Neeve next to him. “Wait, you’re not of Zhel? I was told we were going to be escorted by Zhelian soldiers.”

“I was born and raised in Zhel, but that’s as far as my affiliation with that country goes,” the Lieutenant explained. “I joined the Ionor army during the war. It is true that I volunteered for this mission. My only regret is that there is a need to ask for volunteers for such a simple task as escorting harmless refugees through peaceful territory.” He met Jongdae’s large, black eyes with his own sharp, ice-blue ones. “You have the same right to judge me for my wings as I have to judge you for your age, young Master Bielmaeda.”

The Lieutenant wasn’t wrong, Jongdae knew and accepted as much, but it was still poking him where it hurt the most. Since as far back as stories told, there had been underlying conflicts between Nightborns and the other bloodlines, mostly based on jealousy. For thousands of years those conflicts had remained small and insignificant for most normal people, however it was one of the reasons why Nightborns tended to stick together and live only where other Nightborns lived. During the war, this jealousy had become a hatred so fiery that nothing could stop it. Jongdae, no matter how much he hated that conflict, could understand why it existed. In the world today, there were four separate bloodlines, each with their own traits and characteristics. Dayborns had once been the most numerous ones, born simple with frail physics, relatively short lifespans and no magical abilities. After a few thousand years of mixing with other bloodlines, there were not many “pure” Dayborns left, and most lived on the far island continent of Demea. The most numerous bloodlines of today were Silverborns and Starborns, spread all across the world. Silverborns were a set of enchanting and etherial races, born with magical abilities of all kinds. They were known to be very beautiful although not the most physically able, and lived for up to a century and a half in general. Starborns, like Lieutenant Wu, were born with the potential of extreme physical strengths and skills but could not weird magic at all—most didn’t need it, however. Neeves like the man next to Jongdae had wings powerful enough to blow several men off their feet, and Minaeri’s bodies could survive almost any environment from the hottest dessert to a freezing blizzard. But no matter how powerful the most skilled Silverborn got with their magic and no matter how strong and resilient a Starborn could become, neither could compare to the average Nightborn. Born with near indestructible skin, fast healing, high intelligence, eight-hundred years of expected life and magical powers that, even when not practiced, could impress almost anyone, Nightborns naturally possessed everything that the other bloodlines struggled to maintain. Even as the other bloodlines mixed with each other, resulting in weaker magic, lesser physiques and shorter lifespans, the Nightborn genes could not be passed on—Jongdae’s people could not bare children with other bloodlines.

Yes, Jongdae understood the reason for jealousy to exist, but he didn’t understand why it remained. The Nightborns’ strengths and magic hadn’t helped them when the war came for them. They had fought and died just like any other bloodline would’ve, outnumbered by nature as they were the people with the smallest population and always had been.

Jongdae smiled adorably at the Neeve. “Maybe we shouldn’t judge at all, then. We’re both born in Zhel, both have chosen our own paths in life and we’re both here by choice. My age and your wings aside, we’re not that different.” The Lieutenant nodded in agreement stoically, but Jongdae could see a tint smile in the corners of his lips. “Just one question, though. How is it that we’re to be escorted by Ionor soldiers when the journey is through Zhel? I was convinced that the escort would be Zhelian.”

“It will all be explained during tomorrow’s summit,” Captain Yuno began, “but since you’re so eager I’ll tell you that in the last minute, the Queens of Zhel took back their offer of escorting you, so Ionor stepped in. It is all very sudden. All Zhelian soldiers will be leaving the wall in the morning, even the Wall Guard won’t remain. The official statement is that the Queens will hand over complete control of the border to the Velm Sendian government as a symbol of peace in preparation for the Change of Kings.”

Captain Jinae agreed. “It was agreed upon by both governments and the statement was signed by the King Sendari. So as of tomorrow evening, this place will be a lot emptier than it used to be.”

Although both Captains had spoken rather lightheartedly, Jongdae found the new information a little troubling. “But will our army be able to man the border? Without Zhel’s aid, how can we cover the entire wall?”

“That’s where Lieutenant Wu’s presence comes in,” Captain Yuno continued.

Jongdae turned to the Lieutenant, who was nodding. “After we have escorted you safely to the Colonies I will head for Ionor. From there we will return with enough men to aid in the protection of the border until the Change of Kings is over and the Velm Sendian army can man the wall themselves.”

Jongdae was suddenly extremely happy about the Lieutenant being there—Zhel soldiers in all honour, they were a force to be reckoned with, but Ionor was known for loyalty to their word. As long as they were on Velm Senda’s side, there was nothing Jongdae needed to worry about.

Although the time was nearing midnight and what remained of Isaeng Fort’s inhabitants had gone to sleep, after Jongdae was showed to his sleeping quarters and said goodnight to the Captains and the Lieutenant, he still couldn’t find the peace to sleep. He was too energetic from the first two days of his journey, too worked-up about getting to meet the refugees in the morning and too bewildered by the news that he’d learned today. All of it was circling in his head nonstop. He lay on the hard and simple bed (not even remotely as soft as his own in Castle Nimieri) and stared into the stone ceiling, one arm raised towards it and waving around lazily. He was mindlessly moving a weak, electrical charge between his fingertips, watching out of focus as tiny beams of lightning flashed in his hand and made meek sounds of thunder like the crackling of dry leaves. When the little lightning show didn’t amuse him anymore, Jongdae evacuated the small chambers. He hadn’t gotten dressed for bed yet so he just slipped into his boots and walked out, sneaking through the corridor he shared with a dozen other chambers and down the stairs to the courtyard.

The courtyard of Isaeng Fort was like a long, eye-shaped no-man’s-land of grass and gravel in between two walls that joined on either end and continued south and north along the border. The large tower lay like an iris in the center of the open space with the fire at its top like a bright, orange pupil watching over everything for miles around it. There was one gateway into Velm Senda and another on the other side that lead into Zhel, but inside the Fort there were no countries. Here was the only stretch of land on the entire Najara continent that didn’t belong to anyone, which was why Jongdae found it strange that it seemed to have been given to Velm Senda as a gift.

Apart from four guards walking back and fourth along the walls and two guarding each gate, Jongdae seemed to be the only one awake. The night was peaceful and quiet with only the chill winds, crackling of fires and distant nocturnal birds giving life to the darkness. Jongdae didn’t necessarily like the nights at Isaeng Fort because he couldn’t see anything—the walls were too high around him and civilians weren’t allowed on top of them after nightfall. So Jongdae entertained himself with walking around the stables, feeding apples to the horses and trying to pet the stable cats. They were curious of him and wanted to come forth, but they kept their distance as they reached out with their little paws and meowed adorably. Jongdae had never been able to pet a cat, or any other small animal for that matter. He figured that it was his touch, always slightly electrified, that made the little beasts stay away from him. He didn’t let that get him down. The horses didn’t seem to mind him touching them, so it was okay.

Jongdae hadn’t more than yawned when fate decided that he wasn’t allowed to go back to bed just yet. Through the open stable windows he glanced something moving in a place where nothing should be moving at this hour—the door to the storage house just off the side of the stables, where a shadow just slipped through and vanished. Jongdae froze where he stood and watched in silence, but nothing stirred for a long while. Just as he thought he was imagining things, the shadow returned, sneaking in a rather graceless fashion out of the storage house, closing the door and moving along the wall towards the tower.

Like the Nightborn that he was, Jongdae was out of the stables and soundlessly closing in on the shadow in a matter is seconds. He moved carefully and seamlessly between shadows, making himself small behind whatever cover he could find until he was right ahead of the escaping figure. The figure hadn’t noticed the Sendari yet, so Jongdae climbed up on a barrel, stood still with his back against the wall until the unknown being was right beneath him, and jumped off behind it.

With the touch of a single, electrified finger, Jongdae made the figure jump and scream, turning around so fast that it almost knocked Jongdae off his feet, but the Sendari took a step back before he could get hit. The figure had been carrying something—a bundle of fabric—and it dropped to the ground when the figure jumped.

”Hey there,” Jongdae said casually, every muscle prepared to stop the figure should he try to run away, but the being didn’t attempt anything.

To Jongdae’s surprise, however, he spoke to him in an authoritative voice. “Who are you? State your name and rank.”

The first thing Jongdae noticed was that the person he had stumbled upon was wearing an Army of Zhel’s uniform, or at least enough parts of it for Jongdae to recognise it. The second thing was that the soldier was a Neeve, the same as Lieutenant Wu. His wings were folded up behind his back, the feathered arch of them peeking up above his shoulders, and he had the same icy blue irises. However, there was a striking difference between this particular Neeve and the Lieutenant—actually, between this one and any other Neeve Jongdae had ever met—and that was size.

This Neeve was positively tiny, at least compared to others of his race. He stood at the same height as Jongdae himself, with round cheeks and an overall innocent appearance. The He didn’t seem like he should be in a uniform at all.

When Jongdae snickered, he wasn’t even sure it that was the reason or if it was the Neeve’s commanding outburst. “Name, Neljongdaemid Bielmaeda. Rank, none. I am of the Royal Advisor Sendari’s house, though, so I believe I’m entitled to ask your name and rank, soldier.”

The Neeve soldier took a moment to fight his fluster, then stood up straight as fast as he could and put his hands over his stomach in a Zhelian salute. “Private Xiu Minseok, sir. Asking your forgiveness for not recognising you, sir.”

Again, Jongdae had to swallow a snicker. “We’ve never met, I can’t expect you to recognise me.”

“I...” Private Minseok began, apparently nervous, then straightened his stance again. “Requesting permission to explain myself before you report me to the general, sir.”

Although Jongdae found the soldier amusing in his weirdly un-soldiery ways, he was still curious as to what Private Xiu was doing sneaking around in the middle of the night. Jongdae leaned sideways to look at the bundle of fabric lying on the ground behind the Neeve, then gave a small smile. “Permission granted.”

“It... it was cold,” the Private said. That was all he said, followed by a rather ashamed shadow coming over his pale face.

A little confused at first, Jongdae went around the soldier and picked the parcel up, unfolding it to find... nothing. It was a blanket, a blue traveler’s cloak, slightly weather-bitten. The Neeve stood firm in salute, refusing to look at the blanket, and suddenly Jongdae could feel the chill of the winds in every cell of his body.

“I won’t report you, soldier,” he said softly, folding the blanket back up and holding it out to Private Xiu. The Neeve looked up at him in surprise, blue eyes large and salute faltering. For a moment Jongdae thought that he could see his wings twitch a little. “Go on, take it. Can’t blame you for being cold, it’s freezing tonight.”

After a few seconds of hesitation, the Neeve took the blanket. Jongdae has a hard time understanding why a Neeve who looked like a full grown adult, and a soldier at that, had such careful manners. He looked about himself, glancing nervously at the guards on the walls that were too far away to hear them. Jongdae was just beginning to wonder if he would have to dismiss the soldier when Private Xiu spoke again.

“You’re... a Nightborn... right?”

The question didn’t necessarily surprise Jongdae—he’d heard it a thousand times before—but that didn’t mean he wasn’t tired of it. “Yes,” he confirmed shortly.

“How... how do people salute you in Velm Senda, sir?”

“Salute me?” Jongdae asked, a little confused. He’d just told the Neeve that he had no rank. “Well, we usually just bow to each other, but that’s not—“

Before Jongdae could say anything more, Private Xiu took a step back and bowed, holding the pose for a tad too long before standing up again with a soft but neutral expression and saluting the Sendari in the Zhelian way again.

“Thank you, Niljondemi Belmeda, sir,” the soldier said, but then cringed when Jongdae began smiling. “I pronounced that horribly, sir.”

“Yeah, you did,” Jongdae snickered. “Neljongdaemid Bielmaeda, or just Jongdae. And no sir.”

“Understood, si—master Jongdae,” the Neeve said, replicated Jongdae’s soft smile and turned to leave.

From behind, Jongdae could see that the wings were rather small, even for a Neeve of Private Xiu’s shy stature. He faded into the darkness between the tower and the storage house, then reappeared under the light of the fires by the fort’s door before vanishing through it. Jongdae stood where he’d been left and just watched, processing the fascinating but random meeting he’d just had. He couldn’t help but think that perhaps the Neeve hadn’t been a soldier of Zhel at all and that the clothes were stolen, but he also couldn’t help but trust the little fellow. He’d seemed so earnest, so simple. To clear his suspicions Jongdae went inside the storage house and walked along the rows of stacked weapons, sword racks, into the storage for clothes and armour, the journey room full of preserved food and other miscellaneous sections of the large building. Not a single thing seemed to be disturbed, and the Neeve hadn’t been carrying anything out of the ordinary either—only the blanket. So Jongdae let it go, content with knowing that there was actually someone in the Zhelian Army, no matter how little he seemed to fit in said army, that was as kind and curious as Xiu Minseok was.

After Jongdae went back to his room and lay down on the bed, sleep still refused to come. He though of the journey ahead, the Queens of Zhel’s sudden retreat from their duties to the wall, the weirdness of Neeves since they seemed to come in all shapes and sizes even though most Nightborns like himself looked very much alike. He also realised that even though he had felt it clear as day before and had even gone to bed with an extra blanket himself, Jongdae wasn’t cold at all. The air was actually rather warm for a late autumn, so he threw the blanket on the floor, turned to face the window of his room and let his eyelids fall shut.

As soon as he fell away from the conscious world, the rhodonite stone in the locket around his neck began glowing faintly.


End file.
